


House With No Windows

by QueenRiza



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Gryffindor!Ronan, Lynch Family Dynamics, Quidditch, Ravenclaw!Gansey, Siblings, Slytherin!Adam, gryffindor!blue, lynch brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-21 23:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13751409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenRiza/pseuds/QueenRiza
Summary: Ronan doesn’t question much about his family before his father dies. Hogwarts AU.





	House With No Windows

**Author's Note:**

> See the end notes for some information on how this AU connects (and doesn’t connect) with the Harry Potter timeline, “spoiler” related notes, and credits.

Ronan doesn’t question much about his family before his father dies. And why should he? Things exist always exactly as they should. There are the Barns in the summer, and in the school year, there is Hogwarts. He doesn’t question why his father turns down Knockturn Alley while his mother pulls him along Diagon to buy his books, doesn’t question why his mother seems able to turn every head as she passes by, and doesn’t question why Declan follows his father down Knockturn Alley every time and doesn’t go to Hogwarts, even though he’s just a year older.

All of these questions probably have answers, but what’s the point in asking them when you’re happy with the silence before?

* * *

It’s McGonagall who tells him that his father is dead. She tells him, and Matthew, and Gansey too for good measure (because she seems to think, probably rightfully so, that having him here will soften the blow somehow, the role of a human shock blanket he’s far too willing to play) after she’s called them into the headmaster’s office and apologizes, hastily, that Dumbledore is out right now, a fact Ronan pays hardly any attention to but makes Gansey’s brow wrinkle for just a moment.

Matthew doesn’t understand the sentences that follow; he asks her to repeat them, and she does, and in further, though still gentle, detail. Ronan doesn’t hear that part. His mind is still replaying _“They found him dead”_ with the tinny, haunting kind of cadence he remembers from an old broken musical box his mother kept by her dresser until his father charmed the pieces back together, and the tune played fast and perfect and unremarkably.

_They found him dead._

_They found him dead._

_Dead._

_I’m so sorry._

It only takes a few moments for the spell to break and enlightenment to hit him like a splash of cold water on his face. Of course his father isn’t dead. It would take God Himself and then maybe a little more than that to take Niall Lynch down. This has all been a misunderstanding, and an easily rectified one at that, because there’s no way his father is going to go longer than a few days without fixing this somehow, to Ronan at least, without letting his middle and favorite son know why he has to pretend to be dead.

His mind darts between possibilities—Transfiguration charms on another body, Polyjuice—he can ask Parrish about it later.

“I’m so sorry,” McGonagall says again, and to her credit, she really looks like she means it. Obviously, she adores Matthew—every teacher does, even Snape only halfheartedly deducts points from Hufflepuff after one of the youngest Lynch’s more memorable Potions blunders—but her interactions with Ronan have mainly been characterized by _“Feet off the desk, Mr. Lynch”, “No homework again, Mr. Lynch?”,_ and of course, _“Don’t make me take even more points away from my own house, Mr. Lynch_ ”. But inevitably, Ronan slides his feet off the desk and while he doesn’t do his homework, he always makes a killing on final exams, so he supposes she likes him well enough. Enough to feel sorry for his loss or whatever the fuck.

He looks over to Matthew, who is tearful and visibly shocked. Gansey’s hazel eyes are filled with maddening concern.

He squeezes Matthew’s arm. These people don’t know anything at all. They’re going to be just fine.

* * *

You get time off from school, apparently, when your father is found with 17 different curses shot at the side of his head.

This also means time away from Gansey, who sends Ronan a fervent and concerned owl every day asking how he’s holding up. He also gets one each from Parrish and Sargent, all brief but soulful and filled with condolences, which surprises him even though it shouldn’t. They are, after all, his friends. He is, after all, in mourning.

He doesn’t get one from Noah, which is only understandable, seeing as he’s a ghost and can’t send letters, but everyone makes sure to mention how sorry Noah is as well, and how he’s taken to haunting the old car in the Forbidden Forest—his place of death—to wail and mope belligerently.

Ronan would probably be touched by this the most, but he barely reads the letters. He’s still waiting for his father to show up at the Barns and explain exactly what all this was, to have a good reason for putting them through this.

Ronan had been worried about Matthew, but his mother has been taking it the worst. She spends her time near the window, but never quite outside, holding onto Matthew and weeping gently, still an improbable picture of beauty, her untended golden hair hanging around her face like it’s a veil and she’s the Madonna.

It isn’t until Matthew admits to Ronan “She’s scaring me” in an ashamed sort of voice, like his mother’s breakdown is somehow his fault, that Ronan decides to share his theory with her in a desperate wish that somehow all she needs is a little bit of hope.

“Oh Ronan,” she says tearfully and places a hand on his cheek. “You’re so brave, you know that? You’re really so much like your father.” And then she cries even harder.

* * *

“She needs help,” Declan says, with an infuriating air of authority. “Live-in care maybe. Or St. Mungo’s.”

“What do you know?” Ronan says bitterly, because really _what does he know?_ Ronan has seen his brother maybe twice in the few days since Niall’s supposed death, each time more tense and impossibly demanding than the last.

Declan looks over to the other side of the room for their mother before his gaze hurriedly flickers back. “I know that she’s not going to be able to handle living on her own if she keeps up like this. If we got a House Elf maybe, but even then—“

“We don’t need a fucking _House Elf_ ,” Ronan snarls, and he thinks that maybe he owes a fraction of his condemnation to Blue Sargent’s furious rants. “She doesn’t need help; she has us.”

“I can’t—“ Declan begins.

“Yeah, I know _you_ can’t,” Ronan isn’t actually sure what it is that Declan does that would get in the way of not allowing some stranger to stay in their house or cart their mother off to a hospital, but whatever it is, he also feels like he doesn’t want to know about it. “But I’ll do it. I’ll drop out of school.”

Declan just rolls his eyes at this. “You’re _sixteen_.”

“So what?”

“You’re not of—“

“Who cares—“

This is when Matthew screams. This is when Aurora seems to choke and fall to the ground. This is when all three Lynch brothers run to their mother’s side and Declan checks her pulse and says, with a finality that doesn’t suit the verdict, “She’s still breathing.”

He looks at Ronan. “There should be Floo Powder by the fireplace. Get her to St. Mungo’s.”

“The fucking _fireplace?_ When she’s sick? You’re seventeen, just Apparate and—“

For a moment, Declan’s blue eyes seem almost black. “ _Now.”_

As Ronan helps drag his collapsed mother to the fireplace, as he throws a handful of dust and chokes out a location, he suddenly realizes two things: first of all, that he hates his brother, and second of all, that his father really is dead.

* * *

 

In the months that follow, time moves with a strange normality. Ronan gets some condolences and sympathetic looks when he comes back to Hogwarts, and then everyone seems to move on. Snow falls and melts into overwatered grass, classes proceed according to the syllabus, the Quidditch team adds on a second weekly practice halfway through the semester. Everything proceeds as though his father isn’t dead and his mother hospitalized, cloaked with that guise of forgetting, of renewal, of moving on.

This, of course, is unacceptable. If nature refuses to halt its course for Ronan’s grief, then he’ll pull it to a stop on his own.

He stops showing up for classes. He turns in even less homework than he did before. He gets temporarily kicked off the Gryffindor Quidditch team for “attitude problems” until Sargent apparently has a word with Oliver Wood on his behalf and then yells at Ronan after practice for “being a jackass”. Gansey has moved from wide-eyed and pitying to a sort of lesser degree of the same thing, now accompanied by a kind of maternal “for your own good” energy that drives Ronan up the wall because the entitlement to authority over him reminds him a little of Declan, only that Gansey is unquestionably well-meaning. Parrish seems to have given up on him completely, which is the reaction that satisfies Ronan the most, as it confirms his own suspicions that he may be a lost cause.

Concerned meetings with teachers aside, eventually the year slams to a close, though he has his time vied for on all sides between Blue and Oliver Wood trying to get him out to practice before Quidditch finals, and Gansey and every teacher he has trying to get him to study for his real ones. Quidditch wins, because it’s something Ronan actually likes, though it loses points for the added stress of Wood’s crazed obsession and because there’s something about riding a broom that conjures up the memories of his father in the fields outside the Barns teaching him to do so. He can’t decide if he loves it or if it’s killing him. He thinks that the two might mean the same thing.

* * *

 

“I’ll pass,” he tells Gansey dismissively, bitterly. “I’ll study after the final match.”

He adds, “See? I’m motivated. I’m an athlete,” because he knows that Gansey is worried about him not doing anything productive, that it’s a sign of depression or something.

“I’m holding you to that,” Gansey replies, which is good because Ronan’s next move was to accuse him, as captain of the Ravenclaw team, of having ulterior motives for trying to distract him with schoolwork.

* * *

 

Ronan goes to the pitch to practice, only he doesn’t tell Sargent or Gansey or anyone from the team who might be interested in helping him hit around a Bludger. Instead, he goes to the pitch alone and hopes, without really realizing he’s hoping, that Kavinsky will be there. Kavinsky, who seems to know his way around a broomstick as well as the rest of them, but might also be the only one to truly understand that their greatest magic isn’t in some game, but in pure speed—dangerous, ugly, beautiful speed that threatens to eject you with a jolt, that seems to wear down the very fibers of magic keeping you afloat and the very fibers of your soul keeping you alive.

Kavinsky is not on the pitch. No one is, except a pair of second-year Hufflepuffs puttering around on a long forgotten issue of the _Cleansweep_. He waits for a moment to see if anyone interesting will show up and briefly considers glaring threateningly at the Hufflepuffs so he can have some space, but decides against it because he thinks they might be friends with Matthew.

He mounts the broom, does a few warm-up laps around the pitch and then practices hitting Bludgers at a couple of enchanted moving targets. He gets bored quickly; he’s already pretty good and the whole thing loses its edge entirely without a sense of competition. He abandons the equipment and takes to the sky instead, at least at this moment, racing the wind, challenging the speed of light if he must. It’s breathless, it’s stupid, it’s the few moments where Ronan can forget about hating himself and instead simply be the sum of his parts, just be the feeling of wood in his hands and rushing air on his face.

When he’s up high enough that the air starts to feel thin in his lungs, he stops and glances down. There’s a new figure on the pitch just by the bleachers. Thinking maybe it’s Kavinsky (or any of his gang really; Ronan feels like he could settle for anything as long as it’s a race right now) or Gansey or Parrish or someone, Ronan slowly winds his way back down.

It’s none of those people. It’s Declan.

“Impressive,” Declan says, with the tone he uses when he’s lying, which is to say, his usual tone. “I heard Gryffindor made the finals.” He looks sharper than normal somehow, a jarring dark outline against the pastel expanses of Hogwarts’ lawns. His dark brown hair is combed back, as usual, and he wears a robe, a silk green tie tightly knotted around his throat, that Ronan wouldn’t quite call a dress robe, but definitely too formal for a visit to a school. Business casual, maybe.

“What are you doing here?” he says by way of a response.

“Just dropping by,” Declan lies easily. “It’s not illegal to visit family.”

Ronan snorts. “Bullshit.” Declan’s eye twitches.

“I also,” he says, “wanted to tell you that St. Mungo’s sent an owl the other day; they’re putting Mom on a different schedule. New nurses and all that. They think she’s more stable.”

Aurora has been flitting unpredictably between unconsciousness and bleary sleepiness for months now, too much on the edge of Something to be a lost cause. A feeling Ronan has nearly forgotten—hope—flutters traitorously in his chest.

“That means she can come home then? She’s getting better?”

“Well not quite—“

“But eventually—“

Declan sighs and sits on one of the pitch’s benches in a way that seems to suggest Ronan’s stupidity to be the cause of this sudden weariness. “ _Not_ eventually. Don’t you get it, Ronan? She’s ‘stable’ because this is permanent.”

Everything in Ronan bristles. He says, with as much venom as he can muster, “You don’t know that.”

“She’s not coming home. The sooner you accept that—“

Ronan wants to jinx something—specifically Declan—but he settles for kicking the spot of the bleachers right by where Declan is sitting.

“Mature,” Declan observes coldly.

“Oh fuck you,” says Ronan, “You don’t know any more about Mom than I do. Just because you want to toss her out like garbage—”

Declan stands up, crossing his arms irritably. “Don’t be an _idiot._ Just because I’m the only one here still thinking clearly doesn’t mean that—“

Ronan has almost forgotten wands now. His brother is only a foot away from him and the urge to feel his face against the slam of Ronan’s fist is irresistible.

“ _Ronan!”_ It’s Gansey’s voice—sharp, urgent, disappointed—and then a hand on his arm, halting it disappointingly mid-swing. Ronan swivels around, meeting Gansey’s eyes furiously. Gansey gives him a look that says _Really? Here?_ but Ronan feels anything but chastened.

“I think you should go,” Gansey says coolly to Declan. “I saw Matthew in the Great Hall if you want to speak with him as well.”

Ronan hardly pays attention to what Declan says before leaving—something scathing but with the proper hallmarks to be courteous, he’s sure, but when he does, Gansey turns to Ronan again. He hardly even looks disappointed or angry anymore, just tired. Ronan can watch him mentally cycle through a dozen excuses. _He’s not worth it_ or _Fist fighting, Ronan? Like Muggles?_ or _Do you really want to get caught and lose Gryffindor points right before the match?_

 “What was that one about?” he asks instead.

* * *

 

It’s almost nearing the end of the school year when McGonagall calls him into her office. This makes sense; he knows that he’s failing Transfiguration, and while he also knows that Gansey has exchanged several illicit owls with members of the Hogwarts Board of Governors filled with lofty promises of additions to the Runes wing of the library, bribery doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing McGonagall would take to kindly. So he prepares himself for the confrontation the best he can: a menacing grimace and a thoroughly displaced Gryffindor tie.

Her eyes soften for a moment, just as he sits in the chair across from her and Ronan thinks for a terrifying second that she’s about to tell him that his mother is dead too.

 “I never got a chance to have a word with you after it happened… but—did I ever tell you that I knew your father?”

He looks at her suddenly, caring very little about keeping his expression irreverent or his stance formidable.

“He didn’t go to Hogwarts, you know, so I never had him as a student, but I met him years later, during the war. Your father, he—well, this isn’t speaking ill of the dead if he would have taken it as a compliment—he was such an _ass_. But in the best sort of way; he was the sort of man who could talk anyone into anything, and he would tell the most outrageous stories—“

“How did you meet him during the war?” Ronan asks quickly, suddenly hungry to know anything he can.

“There was a group of us back then—things were dangerous, we were trying to fight however we could. There was a whole younger crowd involved in that—handsome and cocky and so full of potential… A lot of them are dead now. Your father, he—he was a good man, Ronan, that’s all I’m saying. Even then.”

Ronan isn’t totally sure what this means exactly. His father never talked about the war, aside from lofty stories that were obvious tall tales. He feels like he has a million questions and can’t put a name to a single one of them so instead, he says gruffly, “Thanks.”

* * *

 

“So what, then? Some kind of rebel group?”

Ronan shrugs, “She didn’t say. Just that there was a group of wizards who wanted to fight during the war.” He lays down on the grassy fields outside Hogwarts castle and absently shoots sparks from the tip of his wand. “So yeah, I guess. Some kind of resistance.”

“Did your dad ever say anything about the war?”

Niall had said plenty about the war, but nothing Niall Lynch ever said had actually been real. Ronan wasn’t sure how to articulate this to Adam, how to explain that the truth of his father was something a little deeper into the stories he told than their actual events.

“I guess, but I never knew he had anything to do with it.”

Adam takes a moment to rifle through his book bag before pulling out a stack of parchment—a Potions assignment that Ronan hasn’t even thought to look at. He watches him for a minute, carefully sprawling his name at the top of the paper. “You know,” Adam says suddenly, with a considered deliberation. “The other day Gansey was telling me about this group called the Order of the Phoenix.”

Ronan laughs mirthfully. “Of the _what?_ What is that, some kind of DnD group?”

“Very funny. They were an organization during You-Know-Who’s rise to power. Some kind of secret society. Gansey was saying that his parents knew people in it.”

“Couldn’t have been a great secret then.”

Adam shoots him a look that says _It’s the Ganseys,_ and Ronan is inclined to agree.

“What I mean is,” and Adam hesitates now, for a moment seeming to question whether to bring this up, “if a group liked that existed, it would make sense for them to become active again over the past couple years.”

Something freezes in Ronan, something small and in a place he can’t quite reach.

“What’s your point, Parrish?”

The look Adam gives him is almost sympathetic, which Ronan thinks is rich coming from him. “A lot of people have been dying, Ronan. Now that he’s back.”

Ronan doesn’t want to put the 2 and 2 together, but instinct does it anyway. He tries to recall memories of his father over the past year, since You-Know-Who’s supposed resurrection, but it’s the same vague lack of understanding as always. He never knew what Niall had been up to.

“You’re just paranoid because you’re trapped in a dorm with a bunch of Junior Death Eaters.”

Adam shoots him a withering look. “If Draco Malfoy actually wanted to kill Muggleborns half as much as he claims to, I would have died _years_ ago. _I’ll_ be fine.” He looks squarely at him now. “It’s not my business whether you want to know what killed your dad. I just thought I should tell you about that.”

* * *

 

Ronan spends more time than ever now in the Forbidden Forest, sitting on the hood of a red Ford Mustang.

“How did you drive this thing?” he says to Noah, flicking dashes of red off of the worn paint job.

“Learned,” he says, gloomily rising from his favored spot just behind the trunk. “My dad liked cars. Likes,” he corrects himself.

Gansey once asked Noah why he continued haunting the school instead of staying in his family home. After getting inexplicably offended, Noah said vaguely, “Well… that life’s all over now, isn’t it?”

“I could show you how to do it,” he offers now. “It’s not that hard.”

Ronan almost laughs at the idea of trying to putter around in a Muggle invention, but pauses instead, halted by the tug of curiosity, simple wonder at the idea of another mechanism for speed.

“Does it even work?” he asks skeptically. Muggles are infamous for their ability to put exhaustive effort into things that fall apart immediately, and it’s probably not too far off a guess to say that the vines and other magic foliage that have grown their way under the hood aren’t great for the inner workings.

Noah’s face darkens for a moment, like he’s just now considering that things fall apart and end. Only for a moment though, once he floats glumly to the passenger seat, his face lights up, or gets as close to lighting up as it ever has. “I’m pretty sure it’s enchanted actually,” he says. “Wizards don’t just drive cars without any protections. It’s not safe.”

Ronan almost maliciously points out Noah died in the car anyway, but climbs into the front seat instead. There _is_ a certain sexiness to the position, a man surrounded by a hardened ton of aesthetically molded steel meant to bend to his every command, every turn of his wrist. The engine roars to life beneath him—Noah’s doing, somehow—and Ronan nearly falls out of his seat.

“Nice one,” Noah says, not bothering to try to restrain his laughter.

Ronan glares and leans against the wheel. “Mature,” he says. “Now how the hell am I supposed to drive this thing?”

“Just press the gas—that’s the air conditioning,” he says as Ronan reaches for a button. “The gas is the pedal at the bottom. The other pedal. Just press the gas and that’ll make you go forward. Press the other pedal to make you—“

Ronan cuts him off by slamming his foot as violently into the gas pedal as he can.

The car is faster than he could have imagined it being, and despite his best attempts at the steering wheel, it still careens into a patch of trees, clipping off one of the side mirrors in its desperate break through the foliage. Nonetheless, he doesn’t stop, despite Noah’s loud protests that he do otherwise. There’s something about this that’s even better than flying, maybe the violence of it, a machine forged to be loud and fast and destructive. He narrowly misses tree after tree and doesn’t much seem to care, laughing louder with each close encounter when suddenly the vehicle lurches beneath him, Ronan slamming against the dashboard with the force of the stop.

“You press the brakes to stop,” Noah says coldly. “And you put a seatbelt on before pressing the gas. It’s for safety,” he adds, eyes flickering to Ronan heaving himself off the dashboard.

He thinks he might have cracked a rib and he can definitely taste blood in the place his head hit the plastic, so it takes him a moment to register Noah’s tone. He’s angry with him. In a meaningful sort of way, not like when he gets upset at Ronan for making lewd comments when he tries to visit the girls’ bathroom to chat with Moaning Myrtle.

Ronan leans back for a moment, allowing the blood to pool in his mouth before spitting it out the window. “What are you complaining about?” he says, wincing as he pulls himself out of the car’s door. “It’s not like you can die anyway.” He slams the door shut. The banging noise it makes is satisfying and he mentally adds another pro in favor of cars.

“ _You_ can.”

Ronan doesn’t respond, instead grabbing his side and trekking back to the castle, still peeking over the trees.

“Ronan,” Noah floats behind him. “ _Ronan_.”

There’s a moment of deep cold—a hand on his shoulder—that Ronan pulls back from.

“I can help you get back to the—“

“Why didn’t he come back?” Ronan says, not quite looking Noah in the eye. “I keep waiting… we’re all still here… his kids, his fucking wife. You came back, all of these ghosts came back, why won’t he?”

Noah stops cold for a moment and in the shifting light, made fragmented by overhead trees, the smudge on his cheek suddenly looks deeper and more harrowed than ever. “I think he was braver than me,” he says quietly. “Really, I think that’s all it is. You don’t come back for love, no matter how much you had here. It’s just bravery.”

* * *

 

“What is it that you’re planning on doing then?” Blue says, and Gansey speaks hastily before Ronan can make a crude comment about her mother.

“Not anything brash, I hope.”

Ronan snorts. “Thanks, _Mom,”_ he says with an irritable chew at one of his wristbands. “Anyway, it’s not like I would even have to break the rules or anything; I can leave the castle if I talk to McGonagall about it. This isn’t a _total_ fucking prison,” he admits reluctantly.

“Kidnapping your mom from the hospital _is_ breaking the rules,” Adam informs him, earning himself a glare that’s proven itself to strike fear into the hearts of the most courageous of Ronan’s Gryffindor roommates. He raises a cool eyebrow in response.

“Which is why I’m not kidnapping anyone. I’m just visiting my goddamn mother in the hospital, is that an issue or are we going to have another intervention over every decision I make?”

There’s a moment of surprised silence. “Oh,” Gansey says. “Well if that’s all.”

Ronan doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel about everyone assuming the worst, so he soaks himself in the moment instead, steaming in distrust and spectacle.

“And then as soon as I’m 17, I’m getting out of this shithole and I can just get her moved to the Barns anyway. Screw Declan.” This train of thought—the one where he complains about his brother—pleases him so he decides to carry on with it. “Who does that, anyway? Shows up just to tell us that he’s still gonna leave Mom in the fucking hospital. As if I’m supposed to buy that’s the only thing going on.” He doesn’t have quite as much confidence in that last statement as he lets on. It’s true that he doesn’t trust Declan, but he also suspects that he might really just be malicious enough to visit for the sole purpose of rubbing Ronan’s face in the shambles he’s content to leave their family in.

“Well,” says Adam. “He did talk to Dumbledore before he left.”

Three pairs of eyes swivel in his direction at this newly imparted information.

“About _what_?” asks Gansey. “I haven’t even been able to talk with Dumbledore in over a month. I don’t think _Harry Potter_ ’s been able to talk with Dumbledore in over a month.” He seems a little hurt at this. Adam and Gansey are both prefects for their respective Houses, but Gansey doesn’t seem to think anything of dropping in on professors as often as possible to try to discuss his own latest theories and magical interests.

Adam just shrugs. “No idea. I was passing by Dumbledore’s office during rounds when I saw him walking out of it. Right before he talked to you, I think,” he says to Ronan.

Ronan just grunts and flicks a few sparks with his wand, too frustrated to give a real response. “Whatever,” he says. “I don’t give a shit what he’s up to. I can’t believe anything he tells me anyway.” There was a point where Blue might have said something about the importance of family here, but she doesn’t anymore. “If he wants to lurk around schools he was too good to go to, then be my fucking guest.”

There’s a slight pause here, self-conscious in a way that Ronan doesn’t quite understand.

“Well, I mean…” begins Gansey before trailing off.

Ronan frowns at him. “What?”

“Not ‘too good’ for the school,” Adam finishes for Gansey, but Ronan still can’t really parse his meaning. He knows that Adam, more than anyone else, can’t stand Ronan’s indifference towards Hogwarts—a school that’s always been a painful necessity for Ronan and a sole escape for Adam—but he doesn’t know what that has to do with his brother.

“I mean,” says Gansey. “Declan’s a Squib.”

Ronan blinks and gives a sort of half-laugh. _“What?”_

There’s another weird long moment before Blue cuts it off and says, “Well, is he not?”

“You’d never brought it up,” Gansey begins, “but I figured you just didn’t want to talk about everything that went on in your family. But, well, he doesn’t go to Hogwarts even though you and Matthew do, in all the times I’ve been to your house I’ve never seen him use magic or hold a wand, I just sort of assumed.”

“To be fair, so did I,” says Adam.

Ronan sort of wants to laugh at this, and he almost does for a moment, because of course the answer is that Declan didn’t go to Hogwarts because he was helping their father with... something. The attempt to format the explanation into words rather than abstract thoughts renders it suddenly ridiculous. But still, there was always information that Ronan simply was just never privy to. He never knew what his father did for a living. He never knew what Declan did instead of Hogwarts. No one had ever volunteered answers for him, and he had never needed to ask the questions. Ronan blinked again, questions and childhood and memories scurrying to reform themselves in his mind, aware that everyone was still looking at him.

“God,” he says. “He’s a fucking Squib.”

* * *

 

Getting access to Saint Mungo’s is harder than he thought it would be. Not impossible, but more difficult than he expected. He has to meet with his Head of House to get the appropriate paperwork filled out, which means McGonagall sort of well-meaningly trying to ask him if he’s doing alright while also letting him know that if he wants to have any sort of extra privileges and off-campus visits, he’s going to have to pull his act together. She can let him off just this once—as if he’s supposed to be grateful for that—though he needs the signature of a parent or guardian. This probably means Declan, but when Ronan walks back into her office two minutes later with his brother’s name clearly written in Ronan’s handwriting, she files the paperwork without mentioning it.

It’s one of Aurora’s bad days. She’s mostly comatose and a few Healers try to talk with him about it, but end up vacating the room once Ronan utilizes one of his more abjectly terrifying glares. He sits with her then for a few hours—and doesn’t cry, leaves to get a soda, and then sits with her for a few more hours until someone pokes their head in to tell him that visiting hours are over—and he still doesn’t cry.

He’s supposed to Floo back to the castle immediately, but instead he goes back to Ireland, to the Barns, to the fireplace in the living room he knows so well. It’s empty when he gets there and it’s an unlived-in sort of emptiness, hollow and haunting in places that he only ever knew to be full of life. There’s a flicker of a thought where he wonders where exactly Declan has been living this whole time, but that can only last for a moment, when every feeling he’s ever had seems suddenly intent on choking him with loss.

This is it, the sunny, impossible venue of his childhood, rendered into bleakness over the course of a few months. He had thought maybe that he would go out walking through the fields, look at the barns, see if the cows had escaped from their pastures, but suddenly he is very tired. It’s a tiredness that had been sneaking up him all day, all month. It had been there in the hospital, just over his shoulder, it had been there when he had first watched his mother collapse, and here it is now, with its fingers around his throat.

The sun has already set, so he mutters a quick _Lumos_ and wanders through the darkness with memory and that dim light as a guide. He doesn’t go to his bedroom, he stops just a little short of that without really thinking, and stands under the doorframe of his parents’ room for a moment before walking in and sinking down on the king bed. It feels like memories, like tugging at sheets on Christmas morning and pulling on his mother’s sleeve when he had had a nightmare. He closes his eyes and he almost sleeps.

He a _lmost_ sleeps because the silence is cut short by an insidious metallic _clunk_ and the words “Who the hell are you? I have a gun.”

It gets brighter right before he opens his eyes—the lights flicking on—and a “ _Goddammit, Ronan._ What are you doing here?”

“ _Trying_ to sleep,” Ronan says. “You ever heard of it? It’s important for people who are actually fucking human.”

“You know, you’re not nearly as clever as you think you are,” Declan says, and he pockets the thing he was holding—a sinister looking metal contraption that Ronan thinks he’s seen on Muggle movie posters. “Why aren’t you at school?”

“Day off.”

He rolls his eyes, clearly not believing him. “Just go back now before you get in even more trouble than it’s worth.”

“I was just leaving,” Ronan replies with a mocking courtesy. “How did you even know I was here?”

“Are you kidding me?” Declan says. “Don’t be stupid, I wasn’t just going to let this place sit out exposed. I had 20 different alerting enchantments placed on it within a week of Dad dying. Thought you were a fucking Death Eater or something. Next time just knock.”

“The fuck would a Death Eater be doing here?” Ronan says and Declan doesn’t respond. “And because you would have been here to answer?” Ronan thinks about creaking doors, floorboards marked with dusty footprints. “You’re not just letting this place fall to shit?”

Declan tenses. “I’m sure you thought that was very cutting, but you lose a lot of the impact you try so hard for when you clearly don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

It’s a statement Ronan doesn’t bother to question because he’s too busy being enraged by the dismissive self-righteousness it’s said with.

“You never even gave a shit about Dad, did you? You don’t care that he’s dead and you’re glad that Mom’s in the hospital because that leaves you to pretend to be superior and in charge bec—“

He knows that look in his brother’s eyes, the shift in his stance. He’s seen it a million times at Hogwarts right before someone pulls out their wand and shouts the worst spell they know, consequences be damned. He’s suddenly very aware of the fact that it’s just him and Declan in the room, without Gansey or their parents or teachers to pull them back if the argument turns ugly. He feels Declan’s fist before he even sees him swing, and he’s grateful enough for the pain of it that he hardly even feels the sting before hitting back.

* * *

 

“How was it then?” Gansey says.

“Not too bad. She just made me write lines.”

“Not detention,” says Adam. The word is laced with the words Gansey hasn’t yet said, a tired _Ronan…_ a condemnation for breaking the rules that Gannsey can’t quite manage to give when he knows that Ronan going AWOL to visit his childhood home is part of a destructive spiral that he can’t quite begrudge him.

Gansey says, “I meant the hospital. How is she?”

“Oh.” Ronan thinks about that for a moment, sitting next to his mother wrapped in blank white and saying nothing. He doesn’t look at Gansey. “She’s doing alright. I mean she’s ‘stable’ or whatever the shit. She’s still not _doing_ anything.”

“Well,” says Gansey emptily. “These things take time.”

“Yeah,” says Ronan and, because he’s wanted this conversation over since it began, changes the subject. “Are you going to the Quidditch pitch?”

Adam stifles a smirk and Gansey trips over himself for an answer. “Well, _yes_ , but—“

“Relax, Victor Krum, I’m not going to steal your plays or anything.” Though this is definitely something Oliver Wood has tried to convince him to do on more than one occasion. “I just want to practice before the match. Let me hit things at you while you try to throw a Quaffle. Parrish can be Keeper; it’ll be fun.”

“You know that finals are in a week,” Gansey says reluctantly.

“And Quidditch finals are in two days. I told you, I’ll study afterward so you can stop being a grandma about it. Now let me kick your Ravenclaw ass.”

“Well I can’t argue with that,” Gansey acquiesces but when they arrive at the pitch, they find it occupied some unfortunately familiar faces: Kavinsky kicking around on a Firebolt with a few of his cronies, Proko and Skov, flying not far behind.

Kavinsky points at Ronan when he sees him, betraying a surreptitious kind of excitement that takes Ronan slightly by surprise. He lands a few feet in front of him.

“That’s a nice shiner, Lynch,” Kavinsky says in a slippery, distant way that makes Ronan think he ought to have said it while taking a long drag from a cigarette. “Pomphrey couldn’t handle a healing spell or do you just think that you look hot beat up?”

Ronan hasn’t gotten around to cleaning up the physical aftermath of his fist fight with Declan the other day, leaving him with a black eye that Adam has already rightfully called him on only keeping because “he thinks it makes him look tough”.

 _You know it just makes you look like an ass_ , he said, but judging by the filthily uninhibited stare Kavinsky is giving Ronan, it seems like he agrees that it’s not a bad look.

Kavinsky makes another comment too crude for even Ronan involving Ronan, Gansey, and Kavinsky’s own mother, before Gansey says, “Well okay, I think that’s quite enough.”

“I’m joking, of course, Dick,” says Kavinsky lazily, and then in a butchered imitation of Gansey’s accent, “What’s a few jokes between friends? I know,” he continues, “how Lynch got to look like such shit because I saw his brother looking just as bad. You know how you always try to say ‘You should have seen the other guy’ after a fight, but in this case, you both just look like shit. Though I guess Declan has an excuse for not magically solving his cosmetic issues, huh?”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Ronan glances at Gansey and Adam for a moment, both of whom seem equally confused. Unsavory as Kavinsky is, he still can’t imagine a single reason why he and Declan would be anywhere near each other.

“Proko’s got a cousin with a shop down on Knockturn Alley. You been there before?” This question mostly seems to be addressed at Gansey, because Kavinsky seems to think that asking him is the funniest option. “Great atmosphere, you know? Scenic. Despotic. But he needed some help this weekend—all business crap, disappointingly legitimate—so Proko comes down to give a hand and I’m sick of this dump so I decide to tag along. See the sights ya know?”

“Get to the point, dipshit.”

“God, patience Lynch. You let him sass you like this too, Dick? The _point_ ,” he embellishes the word with a mocking flourish of his hands, “is that Proko and I are taking a nice walk through the Alley, a bit of fresh air you know, when I see this fucker with a nasty looking split lip, like someone,” he gestures graciously at Ronan, “punched the shit out of him.

“And I just see this guy for a moment, but I turn to Proko and I say,” and here Kavinsky begins to count on his fingers, “‘One: dark hair, two: looks like an asshole, three: blue eyes you could drown in.’ I say to Proko, ‘Proko, that is a Lynch.’ Now obviously it wasn’t you, and I’ve seen Matthew, so I had to wonder ‘What is Ronan Lynch’s Squib brother doing in Knockturn Alley?’ but then he turned into Borgin and Burkes so there was my answer.”

There is a moment of Kavinsky looking rather pleased with himself before it’s clear that he’s done with his story.

“Well, thanks for that very roundabout way of saying that you saw Ronan’s brother in Knockturn Alley,” says Adam dispassionately. “I don’t suppose you’re planning on leaving enough room for us to also use the Quidditch pitch?”

Kavinsky smirks in a way that Ronan thinks ought to have a warning sign attached to it. “If you want to play with us, Parrish.”

“We should go,” Gansey says and grabs onto Ronan’s arm as if the suggestion needs to be physical for him to agree.

“See ya, Lynch!” Kavinsky says cheerfully.

“Fuck off,” Ronan calls back.

* * *

 

The thing Ronan likes best about Quidditch matches, besides the match itself, is the morning right before. The Great Hall is always filled with a palpable tension, one table side-eyeing another, the potential of victory and defeat existing in overwhelming tandem. Of course, final matches are the best—so long as Gryffindor has qualified—and though this semester, Ronan’s relationship with his teammates has been rockier than ever, this morning, on the crux of it all, there’s something thrilling and bonding about facing the same outcome together.

The good mood can only last a moment, though.

“Lynch,” says Wood. “There’s someone here to talk to you apparently. Your brother.”

Ronan’s eyes roll into the back of his skull. “Of fucking course he is.” Far be it from Declan to wait even a day before trying to get into Ronan’s head.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in reminding you to play nice?” Blue says idly.

Ronan almost smiles. “Probably not.”

“Just make it quick, Lynch,” says Wood. “Be ready to fly in an hour.”

“Trust me, I will be. I don’t have anything to say to him.”

Ronan meets his brother in an empty classroom of the castle that he thinks five years ago might have been an Arithmancy classroom, and now has mostly been reappropriated by such-and-such charms club. The aftermath of its purpose still lingers in its emptiness—a few quills and sheets of parchment float in eerie suspension six or so feet in the air. Declan is already sitting down and he’s clearly spent a few minutes ahead of time identifying which of the rickety classroom chairs sits just a little bit higher than the others, something Ronan forgoes entirely by kicking over the chair closest to him and then crossing his arms and slouching, as insolently as he can manage it, against the brick and mortar wall.

He doesn’t say anything, and for a moment, neither does Declan.

Finally, he sighs. “What are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too,” Declan says dryly. “Your Quidditch final is today?”

“I’m not small talking with you. What are you doing here?”

Something—just for a moment—seems to flicker in Declan’s eye, and Ronan—just for a moment—almost wonders if he actually came here just to check up with him before the match.

Just for a moment though.

“I have a question for you,” Declan says smoothly. “Or for anyone you might know, I suppose.”

“About?”

“About the school. About Hogwarts. About if you’ve seen anything… strange?”

Ronan rolls his eyes again. “Strange how?”

“Oh come on, Ronan. How do you think? Dad only died six months ago, people are disappearing left and right, what do you _think_ I mean?”

“Oh fuck off,” Ronan snaps. “You don’t get to act so superior. You don’t get to act like you know shit about Dad when you’re fucking around with the same people who got him killed.”

Ronan had sort of hoped that this line would elicit more of a response, but Declan remains thoroughly unmiffed, raising a single eyebrow in response. “What?”

“Kavinsky told me that he saw you outside Borgin and Burkes. In Knockturn Alley.”

Declan closes his eyes. “Ronan—“

“I know what Dad was,” Ronan says, and the admission of it feels almost cleansing, to finally hear his suspicions out loud. “I know he was working with one of those anti-You-Know-Who groups and that’s what got him killed. I know that now you’re meeting with the same people who fucking murdered him because—because—because why? You’re _that_ bitter about not being—“

“ _Ronan._ ” Declan stands up from his chair, a long and out-of-place silhouette against the light of the window behind him, looking not unlike he had the other day, right before he punched Ronan. His face settles though and his voice regains its usual businesslike cadence. “You’re not… _completely_ wrong. But you’re missing most of the picture.”

“I really don’t need to listen to whatever bullshit you’ve come up with this time.”

Ronan is already halfway out the door when Declan says, “Do you want to know how Dad died or not?”

He pauses in the doorframe and turns slowly to meet his brother’s eyes. Declan doesn’t say anything, too confident in his bait to scan the surface of the water. Ronan pulls his mishandled chair back up and sits in it as forcefully as he can.

“Fuck you,” he says, but watches him expectantly nonetheless.

Declan settles back into his own chair, running a hand through his hair and glancing over his shoulder at the window. For a moment, his eyes linger on one of the quills still floating across the room, and then his eyes flicker suddenly back to Ronan like he’s being caught in a betrayal.

“You were right about Dad and the anti-You-Know-Who groups,” he begins. “That started during the first war, I guess, but it wasn’t because of the reasons you might think. It was right when he had moved from Ireland to London, and that was the heart of everything. The planning, the meetings from both sides. People were scared out of their minds and he saw… an opportunity. You know, he was a talented wizard, so he started enchanting all kinds of objects for ‘protection,’ talking ancient heirlooms out of their family homes and selling for four times the price he had acquired them at. Hardly honest work, but he was _good_ at it, and what’s more, it put him near the heart of the war. Which is when he got involved with the Order of the Phoenix.”

 _Them again,_ Ronan almost says, but doesn’t.

“They were at a disadvantage. At that point, before Harry Potter, it looked like an almost for sure thing that You-Know-Who would take over England completely before the year was out, and at that point, they were just trying to stay alive enough to put up a resistance as soon as he weakened. Dad was powerful, they wanted to buy from him, and he could never resist an adventure, especially an ill-advised and self-righteous one, so he joined up. Of course, he was selling to the Death Eaters behind their backs the whole time. There was more money in it.”

Declan stops now to gauge Ronan’s reaction, so Ronan makes a point of not reacting. It should be so easy to write this off as another one of Declan’s lies, but below the surface, somehow worry still prickles at his chest, a sort of truth that he doesn’t want to be able to explain.

“And then that continued even after the war was over. At that point—at least this is how he always justified it to me,” he adds incredulously, “He didn’t think there was any harm in continuing to supply the Dark Arts side of things. They were collectors’ items, remnants of an almost-past—nevermind that the people buying were almost always ex-Death Eaters. And then when You-Know-Who came back, _well_ , he really didn’t see that coming did he? But business had to carry on as usual, and the Order was back, now with the Black family fortune behind it, so he went back to selling to both sides.”

Ronan’s quiet again for a minute, running this against what he knows about his father and then, more easily, everything he didn’t get to know about his father. He doesn’t like the way it fits his past like a missing piece of a puzzle, he doesn’t like the look in Declan’s eyes when he when he says it. Ronan can so easily recognize Declan’s face when he’s telling a lie because it’s the face he’s worn his entire life, and it’s not the one Ronan is seeing now.

“That doesn’t explain why you had to have anything to do with it,” he says quietly.

“Well…” he says, bitter and honestly. “What else was he going to do with me? He was getting in over his head; he needed someone to help him handle things, so really I couldn’t have been a more convenient family disappointment. Competent enough to always keep an eye on the door for him and disposable enough that it wouldn’t have mattered if I didn’t make it out.”

“That’s not true,” Ronan says, and for the first time in a while, he’s not sure whether he’s telling the truth or not.

“Isn’t it?”

“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t just _end things_ once he was dead,” Ronan says. “Why continue with it if you were so outclassed?”

“Not _completely_ outclassed. You’d be surprised by the number of wizards who forget that a gun that’s had a good anti-summoning charm placed on it can be just as deadly as any wand. But Dad left debts. People on both sides that he had made promises to that he couldn’t keep. The Order probably would have let them slide after he died, but you don’t understand, I _needed_ them on my side in case something happened with the Death Eaters. People like that, that Kavinsky saw me meeting with, they already wanted me dead to begin with. After Dad was dead, the only thing was that they needed me to hook them up with his old finds. And with me gone, it would only have been a matter of time before they got to you and Matthew and the Barns.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?”

“I was trying to protect you, you little pissant,” Declan says incredulously, as if this should have been obvious. “Dad hadn’t told you about any of this anyway; there was no point in getting you and Matthew in over your heads.”

“I’m not talking about Matthew, I’m talking about _me._ Anyway, you being the biggest asshole of a martyr and getting yourself killed with this cloaks and daggers bullshit isn’t exactly setting me up to be in a great situation to handle things either.”

Declan blinks, like this is the first time he’s considered this. “Okay,” he acquiesces. “Fine.”

“Look,” Ronan says, “even if Dad was doing this whole ‘selling to both sides’ thing, if the Death Eaters are already looking for an excuse to kill you, why can’t you just break with them and join up with these Order fuckers? They sound significantly less evil and probably like they could—”

“Ronan, I don’t think you understand. I still don’t know which side killed Dad.”

Ronan stops short. “Do you really think that the _anti_ -You-Know-Who—“

“That’s the _point_. I don’t know. Wouldn’t you kill the guy who was two-timing your organization, no matter how noble your motives were?”

This really isn’t something Ronan has ever thought about, but he nods like he has.

“This thing is,” Declan says, “I don’t know if it really matters either way. I’ve _seen_ both sides—just the outside, but still. The Wizarding World as it is—Hogwarts, the Ministry, the Order of the Phoenix, whatever—it’s not going to hold up much longer.”

“Well, that’s pretty fucking defeatist.”

“It’s _true_ though. That’s why I wanted to ask you about whether you’ve seen anything. I’ve already heard all about Dumbledore’s absences— _that’s_ not because everything is running so smoothly.”

“Well, what does that mean then?”

“I don’t know,” Declan admits for the first time in as long as Ronan can remember. “That we should all be keeping our heads down maybe. That you should try to be responsible with which Slytherins you piss off and I shouldn’t break Dad’s ties with the people who might decide if we all live or die for shits and giggles.”

“In a _war_?” Ronan says incredulously. “You don’t just get to decide not to choose one way or another. Let your balls drop and actually stick to a side.”

Declan sighs, though he seems more exhausted than annoyed. “I don’t know, Ronan; I’m just trying to ride out whatever Dad was doing, close up deals where I can, and not die. It’s really not my fight.”

Ronan thinks, as he’s been inclined to lately, about what Noah had said to him about his father. _I think that’s all it is. You don’t come back for love, no matter how much you had here. It’s just bravery._ Ronan didn’t know what to make of that at first—bravery in letting go, a posthumous nobility his father had left behind—but suddenly, he’s certain that it’s bullshit.

“Then go,” he says. “You’re right, this isn’t your fight.”

Declan laughs, short and bitter. “What? And leave you with this? I’m not doing that.”

Ronan shakes his head. “Not right away. But soon, once shit hits the fan and you can't play both sides anymore, then yeah. Just… take Matthew and go somewhere and let yourself just be a fucking Muggle for once, for as long as that’s safe. Let’s face it, I’m not going to behave myself for Death Eaters whether Dad owed them stuff or not, so just let me handle it. I can take care of myself.”

Declan is clearly going to argue with him about this, to insist that Ronan c _an’t_ take care of himself, that he doesn’t know what he’s trying to get himself into, but he stops instead, a strange look on his face.

“You don’t even know that—” He stops himself again. “You would let me know if they tried to get into contact with you about Dad? If you needed help with anything?”

Ronan nods. “I have to go,” he says. “I have my match. But think about it.”

“Alright,” Declan says. “I will.”

Ronan has almost already made his way out the door when he stops. “You can come, you know. To the match, if you want to see it. That would be okay.”

He leaves before he can get an answer.

* * *

 

On the field, the sun soaks the grass with rays almost bright enough to be blinding. As both teams line up midair, hovering in biting anticipation, Ronan catches Gansey’s eye on the Ravenclaw side. _Loser_ , he mouths, and Gansey grins jubilantly and laughs in response. He almost misses the Quaffle being tossed, but then there’s the telltale rush of the flurry of broomsticks around him, and Ronan lets himself shoot into the air, exhilaratingly high and, for a few moments, _free free free._  

**Author's Note:**

> NOTES ON THE TIMELINE  
> This fic more or less takes place during the Half Blood Prince, with the glaring inconsistency of Oliver Wood being the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain instead of Harry. I opted for this for two reasons: 1) Wood is just more fun to write as a captain than Harry, and 2) I felt like Harry Potter explicitly appearing as a character with actions and dialogue in a TRC fic was kind of taking this closer to “crossover” territory as opposed to an AU.  
>   
> “SPOILER” RELATED NOTES  
> “Chloe,” you might say, “how on EARTH am I supposed to buy that Ronan went his entire life without putting together that Declan was a Squib until he was explicitly told?”  
> Well, hypothetic fic reader, that’s fair. I have exactly the same question for canon, TRC Ronan himself, who doesn’t think to ask Matthew about whether him or Declan have any dream powers and doesn’t realize that his own mother was a dream until The Dream Thieves, and doesn’t even question whether his father was running the business by himself, or how growing up the only non-dream affiliated person in the family might have impacted Declan until the last book.  
> Basically, Ronan is shockingly oblivious to literally everything that goes down in his family, so while this is some next level bullshit on his part, I didn’t feel like it was too far of a reach for this universe, where something like having a Squib child is going to be hushed up to begin with.  
>   
> CREDITS  
> Credit to [this Tumblr post](http://ellipsesetcetera.tumblr.com/post/162329467830/hogwarts-au-where-ronan-and-blue-are-the-best) for giving me the concept of Gryffindor beaters Ronan and Blue, AlicebanD’s song “Wait for Me” for the title (the song has nothing to do with the fic, but I recommend the band regardless), [this fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4870921/chapters/11166013) for the concept of Hogwarts ghost Noah, and my mom for reading TRC and, in a conversation about the Lynch family, saying, “Declan? Oh, he was a… what are they called? A Squib.”


End file.
